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Nearly 6% of black gay men under 30 become newly infected with the AIDS virus each year, according to research presented Monday at AIDS 2012, an international conference of more than 21,000 doctors, activists and policy makers.

Among gay black men, nearly 3% become infected each year, according to the study of 1,553 men in six American cities, funded by the National Institutes of Health. That rate is nearly twice as high as the rate among white men who have sex with men, the study says.

Those yearly infection rates quickly add up over time, says Kenneth Mayer, medical research director at Boston's Fenway Health, a leading HIV/AIDS clinic, and co-chair of the study, the largest, forward-looking study of its kind. At this rate, more than half of young black gay men would be infected with HIV in only a decade, Mayer says.

"This is extremely concerning," Mayer says. "Here we are, this far into the epidemic, and we have these rates."

Many men in the study failed to appreciate their risks. Among those who either thought they were HIV-negative or didn't know their status, 12% tested positive for the virus, Mayer says.

In a statement, AIDS researcher Wafaa El-Sadr, a co-author of the study from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, called the findings "a sobering wake-up call."

Mayer's study didn't measure national prevalence rates. However, a report released last week by the Black AIDS Institute noted that one in four black gay men have HIV by age 25, and that 60% have HIV by age 40.

The CDC also has noted a nearly 50% increase in infections in young black gay men from 2003 to 2008. Such steep increases in HIV infections are unprecedented, says Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute, even in some of the world's hardest-hit developing countries. Although black men who have sex with men make up less than 1% of the U.S. population, they account for one in four new HIV infections, according to the CDC.

Wilson says the epidemic about black gay men has been mostly ignored.

"It speaks to how much work is left to be done," Wilson says. "It speaks to what happens when we define a segment of our society as disposable."

Nationwide, more than 1.1 million Americans are living with HIV, an increase of 60% in the past 15 years, the CDC says. In a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association published Sunday, CDC researchers note that this huge population of HIV-positive Americans makes prevention more difficult.

That's especially true among black men who have sex with men, Mayer says. Because black men tend to mostly date other black men, their dating pool is relatively small. And with such high rates of HIV infection, they face huge risks with every new partner, he says.

Across the USA, there are about 50,000 new HIV infections a year.

In Mayer's study, those who tested positive for HIV were much more likely to have a sexually transmitted disease, he said. Men with HIV also were much more likely to be poor.

Both increase the risk of disease transmission. STDs create inflammation that make it easier for the AIDS virus to enter the body. And because poor people generally have more problems getting health care, they're less likely to be tested, know their status and be on treatment, Mayer says. Recent studies show that effective treatment can make patients virtually non-contagious, and most AIDS researchers at the conference this week now seem to see "treatment as prevention" as the best hope for containing the disease.

The study reinforces the notion that fighting AIDS will involve more than just changing individual behavior, Mayer says. Research has consistently linked HIV infections with poverty, suggesting that the country needs to address "structural" issues, such as homelessness, discrimination and economic opportunity, Mayer says.

Poor men also may resort to "survival sex," exchanging sex for housing or other basic needs, Mayer says. Like poor women, these men have less bargaining power to negotiate safer sex, Mayer says. That leaves them in no position to demand that partners use condoms, he says.

Recent research has dispelled a number of myths about why HIV is so common among black gay men. Black gay men do not have more sexual partners or unprotected sex than whites, Mayer says. CDC studies show that the higher rate of HIV in this community is not related to rates of incarceration or circumcision.

Some young people today don't realize the dangers of HIV, says Brandon Kennedy, 24, who has HIV.

"Those individuals weren't around when the epidemic first started and they didn't see people looking like skeletons," says Kennedy, who tested positive at age 21, and has joined a new CDC campaign to encourage HIV testing. "With the advances in medications, we don't see the side effects that we saw in the early 1980s. People think, 'I'll take a pill and that will make everything go away.' "

Kennedy says other young gays ignore their risks out of a sense of fatalism.

These young men fail to protect themselves, Kennedy says, because "they think they have done so much wrong, they will eventually end up positive or they already are positive."

Many young gay men, rejected by their families and churches, are too desperate for approval to speak up for themselves, Wilson says.

"When you have young men who have been denied love their entire life, they will give anything to be loved, including their lives," Wilson says.

Families can help to turn the AIDS epidemic around, however, simply by supporting their children. Young people who feel accepted and loved are more likely to form healthy relationships, Wilson says.

"People ask me, 'What is the most important thing we can do to help young black gay men?' and 'When do you begin AIDS prevention?' " Wilson says. "My answer to both is the same. You start the first time you hold that child to your breast after they're born. You start every time you tell them you love them, when you remind them they are valuable. When you remind them that there is someone who has their back, that they are not alone."

Like many young gay black men, Kennedy, from Indianapolis, moved to Atlanta, which some have called the "black San Francisco."

Yet Kennedy said his first call was to his mother. His mother, Kimberly Turk, says she wasn't thrilled to learn, eight years earlier, that her son was gay. But Kennedy says that she has supported him since he tested positive. They talk several times a week and text "constantly," he says.

"We went through those tough times, but now we value our relationship a lot more," Kennedy says.

"My story is, 'Don't be so quick to give up on your parents or the relationship,' " Kennedy says. "You should still put in a lot of work and effort before you are willing to just write someone off because they don't understand."

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